Traditionally, in order to receive television programs, users were limited to broadcasts of the television programs that were received via antennas, from cable providers, and so on. For example, the user may have configured a traditional “over-the-air” antenna, connected a cable to a television set, and so on to receive broadcasts of television programs.
Today, however, users are consistently exposed to ever greater varieties and amounts of content. For example, users may now receive and interact with pay-per-view (PPV) content (e.g., movies and sporting events), video-on-demand (VOD), video games, and so on. Additionally, users are continually be exposed to content having an ever increasing “richness”, such as that experienced in a transition from standard-definition content to enhanced-definition content to high-definition content, and so on.
Providing this content to the users, however, may consume a significant amount of bandwidth. For example, a content provider may provide multiple streams of content to hundreds and thousands of locations, e.g., households. Therefore, to ensure that each household may receive content as desired, the content provider may allocate portions of the content to each household. However, each household may be able to consume more content than that which is allocated, which may lead to user frustration when not properly managed, thereby adversely affecting the user's experience with this content.